D3263: Biodiversity of sweat bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) occurring in the Texas high plains

Information on the diversity and distribution of bees in Texas is relatively scarce and scattered, and baseline information is needed to support conservation assessments statewide. In the Texas High Plains, collections of bees have been conducted from different studies since 2015, focusing on agricultural landscapes. Funding from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has supported work to curate (i.e., mount, label, and identify) these specimens to transfer to long-term storage in the Invertebrate Zoology Collection at the Natural Science Research Laboratory, Museum of Texas Tech University. Bees were collected using either sweep nets or bee bowls. Specimens were identified using several taxonomic resources and considering morphological characters. To date, 8,500 halictid specimens have been databased, with records from six Texas counties. Across the collection, 75% of the specimens have been identified to genus and 25% have been identified to species.  Information generated by this project includes locality, collector, date of collection, and taxonomic identification; it will help support future conservation assessments while improving access to data necessary for regional comparisons. Our goal is to have at least 10,000 specimens completely identified and digitized by December 2024.